Rotten Apples, Everywhere

Holy Kee-rap! I go away for a couple weeks on vacation from cyberspace, from high-tech nonsense, and find out there is the stink of Cupertino all over. I shouldn't be surprised, however, because the first quarter of every year the peoples at Apple announce updated computers and sometimes a stray iPod.

Well, there are three Rotten Apples on this day, and due to my little escape to nowhere, I'm late on this, but I'll say them anyway.  No discourses on pop culture or conspiracy theory today, just rants on my favorite thing I love to hate, Apple Inc. I won't even bother with the new Macs, because I don't feel like it. But here are the things that did stick in my throat...

1. The iPod with No Buttons -- WTH? (Nicer cousin of WTF). The third generation shuffle has no buttons, nada, goose eggs. Just a shiny little rectangle thing with a clip on the back and that Bitten Out Fruit only, no words or anything, since that Fruit is so recognizable to people, I'd say. Introduced early March, this stinko can be controlled only with Apple earphones or third-party ones with a special Apple Only Official Authorized Certified

 Teeny Weeny Chip®. The new shuffle is also even smaller than the previous clip-on thing that I swear once tried to bite me at a Best Buy store, but that's another story.  It is but .7 inches wide by 1.8 inches long and .3 inches thick -- Completely Ready for Easy Losing.  Such an elegant little thing to lose, too, huh?

Stainless steel in black or silver replaces the aluminum of the second generation, which, if you dig a little on the Fruit Store site, can still be bought.

This product is typical quirky, vintage Apple, which comes up with something bizarre and shoves it down people's throats.  Like IKEA, Apple always makes these weird things with spacey designs that leave you scratching your head. IKEA makes pillowcases with this end flap thing I've never seen anywhere else, and the Fruit Co. sells an MP3 player with no screen -- and now no freakin' control buttons, except the power/shuffle/play in sequrence one at the top.

The shuffle also talks, probably in a voice like the cell phone of my boss of my friend Cross-Eyed Julie Novak, which sounds like a drunken female android: "Lossss offfffff suhhhhr-vissssssssssss" ("Loss of service," what it says when the signal's gone).  Or maybe like one of my niece's old toys, the Family Talking Dollhouse, which had these cheerful robot voices that turned on every time you moved a person around the rooms and put him/her on a activation base: "I'm--going--to--the--kitch--en."

VoiceOver is Apple's trademark for this thing, which tells you song, artist, track, etc. If you think about it, this is long overdue, as the shuffle never did have any friggin' screen and simply too random of a MP3 player for anyone to have in his/her possession.  I can just imagine -- VoiceOver is activated, and it sez, "Awlllllllllllllll--You--Need--Izzzzz--Love--Beeet--tulllz--Magi--Kull--Mizzz--tuh--reee--Toooo---Wer...."

The only thing that impresses me is that the shuffle now has 4 gigs of space, what you found just two years ago in a second generation nano. Otherwise, I would probably have a heart attack if someone tried to clip one of these little bastards to me. Or else throw it down the nearest sewer.

2. iPhony 3.0, oh my! People are raving about this. About an operating system. For a cell phone.  But of course I'd get the answer, "But this is Apple..." because the craziness of the Fruit Cult is that raging and thinks its products are so amazing. I mean, remember when they called the first iPhony the "Jesus phone," apparently because it was like the Second Coming of cell phones or maybe the savior of the cellular industry?

Announced on St. Patrick's Day, of all days, 3.0 includes things that should have been on the phone from the get-go in '07, like cut and paste, system wide searching and the ability to put images, videos, etc. in text messages. 

On its site, Apple sez there are 100 new features in the software, which will come out in June, probably with even more scary iPhony handsets that will remind me to stay away those malls in my area with a Fruit Store or AT&T shop therein. As part of this, Fruit Co. also released a new software development kit for all those thousands of loons who are doing the third-party applications for the phone.

I am not impressed with this, as you'd guess. But I had to begrudge 'em a little with these near-future things that will turn the iPhony into a blood pressure cuff or a glucose meter for diabetes monitoring. That's freaky, but, I'll admit, innovative. Has anyone ever thought to check their blood sugar with a BlackBerry or a Palm before? I don't think so. But it still doesn't make me want to throw away my Razr for a Fruit handset. Mainly because I heart my Razr, and have this little thing called a Contract binding me to it.

Gizmodo goes on and on about this future operating system here.

3. Dancing Fool -- Last, and certainly not least, is the horror pictured at right. I about fainted

when I heard that Stephen Gary Wozniak was going to be on ABC's Dancing with the Stars? What on earth? Did I hear you correctly? Is this an early April Fool's joke?

Nope. Since 6 March 2009 people have been subjected to this super-geek's struggles in the national ballroom. As many guessed, Woz can't dance. What he is doing on the floor, nobody really knows. Maybe Silicon Valley Billionaire Geek Aerobics? And it's worse now that he's hurt his knee.

As shown, Woz is dressed for dancin' in a pukey shirt in a shade of pink suitable only for girls age 6 and under. Who picked this out for him? He looks like a walking super economy size bottle of Pepto-Bismol! Bulky guy + hot pink satin = nightmare you have on a cold dark winter's night.

The funny thing about it is he looks so damn happy, as much as he does when zipping every which way on his Segway and promoting computers in the classroom.

You see him in the green room backstage at the show, with the other dancers and celebrities, and he always has this same shit eating grin on his face. It's almost like he didn't listen to his mom that if he didn't stop making such and such a face so much, his face would freeze up that way.  Even though he has no dance skillz, Woz appears to be having the time of his life and trying to seriously listen to his partner, Karina Smirnoff. But sometimes people just can't learn things. I can't sing, walk a tightrope or code in Linux, and never will. Woz can't ballroom dance and never will, either.

Watch enough of this, and you'll want to buy and consume that other Smirnoff available on the shelf behind the counter of your local party store.

After blundering about in a samba last night and getting a crappy 10 from the judges, I am very sure this geek will be sent packing for his mansion in Los Gatos, Californy this week. When he did a move called "the worm" across the floor, he may as well have been groveling across the floor toward the judges, begging for mercy to no longer wear corny formalwear and scare 5-year-olds into thinking that maybe they're seeing one of Maurice Sendak's Wild Things in person on their TVs in a the midst of a seizure.

May Dancing with the Stars fans be a bigger force than the Apple Heads in voting him away. That's the key. All DWTS fans must fight against the Apple Cult to get rid of this guy, or he's going to hang around like day old Wonder Bread. Please send him back to Segway polo and shooting his mouth off at tech conferences, pretty please? And while they're at it, send Steve-O from MTV's Jackass home, too.  These guys are just too scary.